UW-Stout News

UW-Stout News Story

Campus to host forensics tournament Friday, Saturday

November 28, 2012

Dozens of students representing at least 13 universities are scheduled to compete Friday, Nov. 30, and Saturday, Dec. 1, in the annual Michael Nicolai Collegiate Forensics Tournament at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Competition, which consists of individual events within the categories of oral interpretation and public address, will be from noon to 7:30 p.m. Friday and beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, ending with an awards ceremony at 4:15 p.m.

The competition will be based in the Memorial Student Center, with events scheduled at four other buildings on campus.

Along with UW-Stout, teams scheduled to compete are University of Minnesota-Mankato, UW-Eau Claire, South Dakota State University, Ripon College, UW-Whitewater, Bethel University, St. Cloud State University, Southwest Minnesota State University, UW-Madison, South Central College, North Dakota State University and Gustavus Adolphus College.

UW-Stout students competing will be Taylor Hayes, of Menomonie; Austin Stewart, of Fond du Lac; Nate Ott, of Crystal Lake, Ill., and Kelsea Osterman, of Fairchild. They are first-year competitors.

Other UW-Stout team members have volunteered to help run the tournament, according to Coach Susan Collie, a speech communication instructor.

The 47th annual tournament was renamed in 2009 to honor Michael Nicolai, former director of forensics at UW-Stout. He helped create the American Forensics Association national individual events tournament. He was chair of the Speech, Communication, Theatre, Foreign Language and Music Department.